The Sopranos Story

(This is the story I promised to tell over at the Dreamspinner Blog, do check out my post over there, since there’s a giveaway!)

Picture it. Newark, New Jersey, 1998. I’m still a college student living my parents over the summer.

Flyers appear in our mailboxes informing us that a brand new HBO show called the Sopranos would be filming on our street, on a certain date, so be sure to have all cars off the roads.

At the time, we had no idea what the heck this was. The show had just started filming, it wasn’t a phenomenon yet, and we were all really pissed off about having to move our cars. Street parking is really hard to find in Newark, and it wasn’t like you could find a spot a few blocks away.

It turned out they wanted to use our neighborhood for a scene that flashed back to the 1960s, in the episode called Down Neck. This was because our neighborhood hadn’t changed much from the 60s.

Let me tell you – watching a film crew filming? Is really boring. We must have watched that bus come down the street fifty times. The extras reset again and again. We had our heads out the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of something exciting.

If you watch the clip on youtube (warning for violence and foul language), you can see one of my neighbors staring out her window. She’s not one of the featured extras, and you have to look closely to glimpse her. Unfortunately (Or maybe fortunately?) you don’t see my head sticking out of our window:)

For years after this show aired, whenever I went to another state and said I was from Jersey, I always heard “Oh, like the Sopranos” in response.

And I always responded “not quite” because Jersey is so much more than that. Even in Love in the Time of Hurricanes, I give only a glimpse of one of the amazing places in my home state.